Dan Snow's History Hit - THE LEADERS: Hirohito

Episode Date: March 24, 2025

Was Hirohito really as passive as history has painted him? Emperor Hirohito stood at the head of Japan’s war machine, yet after 1945, both the Japanese and the Americans painted him as a powerless observer.But is passivity just as bad as collusion? In this episode, Dan is joined by Christopher Harding, lecturer in Asian History at the University of Edinburgh and strategy expert Professor Phillips O'Brien at the University of St Andrews to examine Japan's catastrophic wartime strategy, its army's brutality and debate how much of the responsibility for that lies with Hirohito.Content Warning: This episode contains discussion of suicide warfare.If you would like to subscribe to Chris' substack, then it can be found at www.IlluminAsia.org.Produced by Mariana Des Forges and edited by Dougal PatmorePhillips' book that inspired this series is called 'The Strategists' and is available now.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.We'd love to hear your feedback - you can take part in our podcast survey here: https://insights.historyhit.com/history-hit-podcast-always-on.You can also email the podcast directly at [e-mail].

Japanese Emperor Hirohito died in January 1989. It happened peacefully, in his bed in Tokyo's Imperial Palace. He was pushing 90 years old. In his final moments, he was surrounded by members of his family. old. In his final moments, he was surrounded by members of his family, and after he passed away, court doctors washed the emperor's body and purified his clothing, in keeping with centuries of tradition. His daughter described his passing as peaceful. His son succeeded to the chrysanthemum throne. The world's longest, continuously running hereditary monarchy glided on. And what followed his death could not have been in starker contrast

the deaths and the legacies of his fellow Axis leaders. Hitler's sordid murder-suicide in the bunker under Berlin, and Mussolini's public hanging in a Milan town square. And that suggests that Hirohito did something quite remarkable. He outlasted his wartime counterparts. He evaded war crimes investigations. outlasted his wartime counterparts. He evaded war crimes investigations.

He avoided having Japan's wartime record associated with his name. And he remained ruler of Japan until his death four decades later, at which time Japan was one of the world's richest and most advanced nations. All of which is quite astonishing, given the brutality with which the Japanese fought the war across Asia and the Pacific. Appalling civilian massacres in China, in Korea, Southeast Asia, violations of the Geneva Convention, human experimentation, even evidence of cannibalism. Evidence of cannibalism. And, on top of which, Japan in 1945 was in an absolutely ruinous state.

Its cities razed by firebombing and even atomic strikes. In the years that followed the war, it became convenient for various constituencies that Hirohito's connection to that war should remain ambiguous, unclear. The Americans, for example, discovered that they needed him. They needed him as a symbol of continuity as they rebuilt Japanese society and pursued post-war aims in Asia. So in this episode of The Leaders, we are scrutinizing Hirohito's war. What did he know about Japan's brutal militarism? How much a role did he play in forging Japanese strategy? And I ask, if he was passive, well, how is that different from collusion?

How is that different from collusion? He has much more power than people pretended he had after the Second World War. We have to understand there's an attempt to whitewash his influence after the war because people don't want to say he's powerful. They don't want him to carry the blame for the war. You're listening to Dan Snow's History It. And in this episode, we're examining the biggest wartime decisions of the Japanese emperor, Hirohito. Hirohito was born into a kaleidoscopic world, one of both tradition but also transformation. He was born in April 1901. He was a sign of the imperial house of Japan, the grandson of the

Emperor Meiji, the ruler who'd restored imperial fortunes and overseen Japan's rapid modernization. As was normal for imperial children, poor things, he was separated from his parents shortly after birth. He was given to trusted aristocratic families to care for. He had an ultra-elite upbringing, as you can imagine. He was the sole pupil of a special school created just for him. During his youth, during that education, he developed a passion for marine biology. That became a lifelong interest. But like all imperial children, he was sent down a military path. Age 11, he was commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Army as a second lieutenant.

And that same year, upon the death of his grandfather, his father ascended to the throne, bringing Hirohito's own reign as emperor one step closer. At age 20, he became the first Japanese crown prince to travel abroad. He later recalled that his time in Britain had been the happiest of his life. Six years later, following the death of his father, he assumed the role that he had been destined for and prepared for since his birth. Well, before his birth, he became the 124th Emperor of Japan. Now, unlike the other leaders we covered in this series, we don't have much in the way of personal accounts of Hirohito, or even official accounts, frankly. He was a private man. He gave few public appearances,

but particularly after the war, he retreated from public life in favour of pursuing private hobbies and solitary research into scientific interests. We know he had a monogamous marriage which produced seven children that broke from the tradition of emperors maintaining a large cohort of imperial concubines. There are some sources, but far fewer than relate to, say, Churchill or Hitler. It is difficult to penetrate Hirohito's motivation. And frankly, it's quite difficult to understand the inner workings of Japan's military decision-making. So to help me work it all out, I'm joined by some really truly brilliant contributors. First up, we've got Christopher Harding, lecturer in Asian history at the University of Edinburgh. He's going to try

and shed some light on Japan's enigmatic imperial leader. Chris, the Japanese emperor has meant different things in different periods, hasn't it? When he was born, what was expected of him and his family? What was expected of an emperor? He's expected really to be both at the centre of government, but not to be an absolute monarch. So if you kind of draw one of those little childish pictures of the constitution, all the lines point back to the emperor, you know, from the cabinet, from the diet,

from various military officials. So in effect, he looks like he could be in complete control of everything, actually, including the judiciary as well. But in reality, he's expected to really sort of colour within the lines of the constitution. And I suppose you could say reign more than rule would be the ideal. And I suppose you could say reign more than rule would be the ideal. And you have this funny sort of additional element with Japan where when you have these imperial conferences with the emperor present, you get the etiquette of the ancient imperial court sort of bumping up against modern politics. So you've got modern politicians coming in who are cut and thrust type people, whereas the emperor deals in a much kind of quieter,

who are cut and thrust type people, whereas the emperor deals in a much kind of quieter, almost lethargic kind of imperial culture. So if he's asked a question, he might ask a question in return as a way of implicitly sort of hinting that he disagrees, or he might even lapse into complete silence or start reading poetry, again, to try and hint at some elements of displeasure. But that can easily be misinterpreted, you know, whether accidentally or willfully. Was he given a fitting education for the role he was going to play? So yes, he had all sorts of tutors around him. He had a particular interest, I think, in science, loved a bit of marine biology, had a little laboratory built for him in the grounds of the Imperial Palace. But he was also seriously interested in his role as a constitutional monarch, I think, very well educated in international affairs as well as imperial history.

He seems to come across as a fairly cautious person, sort of liberal in his political instincts, an internationalist. He visited Great Britain in 1921, big fan of Britain and the Anglo-American powers. But I think he also was given given in his upbringing, a really powerful sense of just how far back the imperial institution goes in Japan. So he's got a very strong sense of his responsibility in maintaining this institution. And I think something that weighs greatly on him during the war is how does he manage Japan's predicament, which is largely the product of kind of over ambitious military officers? How does he manage that's predicament, which is largely the product of kind of over-ambitious military

officers? How does he manage that so that the imperial institution can survive? In the end, for him, that's what it comes down to. He's the latest person at the helm of this very ancient ship, and it cannot sink on his watch. You mentioned he's rather liberal in his political views. Before the outbreak of war. Can we see his influence in Japanese domestic or foreign policy? I think it's quite difficult to read that very successfully. It's funny because unlike someone like Churchill or Roosevelt or Truman, we don't have enough kind of personal documentation, you know, diaries or letters, etc, to get a real sense of the man's soul. So I think that's quite tricky. He's probably, of all the wartime leaders, he's the one to whom the idea of leader applies in the most indirect way only. So much of

the time when we do get a sense of how he's feeling about things, it's, I think, for example, in the early 1930s, and he's still a young man by this point, it's worth pointing out, he's only in his early 30s himself at this time, he becomes quite frustrated with the idea that there are elements in the armed forces that he can't control, that may be doing things in the name of the emperor, but are actually going against his wishes. So I think an example of that would be Japan has this presence on the mainland, the Chinese mainland already in the early 1930s, but very famously, in the late part of 1931, the Kwantung Army, on a pretext, begins to take over Manchuria. And then in the early 1932, they declare Manchukuo as this independent state. You can see the emperor saying to his advisors,

these people are putting Japan in danger by doing this. They won't do what we want. And yet they're sort of using the kind of fig leaf of imperial interests to do it. So I think he has a real sense of frustration at the limitations on his power. And at the same time, people around him who are probably less concerned with Hirohito himself than with the survival of the imperial institution, are advising him not to rebuke the army too directly. Because if he starts to do that, and you create a real sense of rift between the emperor and the army, then things could get quite sticky for the imperial institution quite quickly. So I think he has a real sense of frustration at the limits of his own power,

in the way that he's expected to wield it as a constitutional monarch. It's very weird, isn't it? Being threatened by the army, which is an institution on paper devoted entirely to your well-being and loyal to you, and yet you fear them. It must be hard, although given that he's got an appreciation of history, really the last thousand years or so of his family's history have been very much the same, to be honest. Even if you go back to the heyday, you know, the time of Murasaki Shikibu around the year 1000, the so-called kind of heyday of imperial power, really the imperial family is being pushed around by wealthy families around it, told what to do, intermarriage with these families. You could argue, I think, that one of the reasons

why the Japanese imperial family has survived all the way down to the 20th century is that it ends up being a really convenient source of legitimacy for whoever the latest real power play is to come along. You know, if you're a samurai who's just won a war and people haven't really heard of you, if you go along, visit the emperor, pay for some imperial palaces to be tidied up a little bit, then you can say, you know, I'm operating for the good of the country. So it's extraordinarily convenient, the imperial family, for these sorts of purposes. And I think if Hirohito had any appreciation, which I'm sure he did, of his family's history, then it's plus a chance, really, for his family. Do you think that they might have made him a mere puppet? I think so. I think he could easily become a prisoner of an even more assertive militarist

faction within the army. I think what's really going on in the army, and this is where lots of the trouble I think begins in the late 20s, nearly 1930s, is that you get a younger generation of army officers who aren't old enough to remember when Japan used to be on the back foot internationally. They've grown up with Japan after the successful war with Russia, 1904 to 1905, after the alliance with Great Britain. You know, Japan is already a great power. They don't have much of a sense of Japan's potential weakness. And so they're constantly pushing the boundaries. I think their view, particularly of what's going on in mainland China and on the Asian continent more generally,

is that in the 1920s, as Chiang Kai-shek and the nationalists are starting to consolidate their power on the mainland, as the Soviet Union is consolidating itself in its eastern portion, Japan is really going to have to assert itself if it's not to lose its role on the Asian continent completely. You know, it's worth remembering that Japan has colonised Korea by this point. It has a very lucrative railway corridor in Manchuria at this point. And I think some strategists, and particularly the sort of the hotheads, are thinking, if we don't assert ourselves more, then either Chiang Kai-shek or the Soviets will do it for us and we will be squeezed off the continent. That way of looking at things becomes really,

really dominant in the army. And the emperor is a useful sort of figurehead in pursuing those sorts of policies. And so Hirohito finds himself having to play, I think, quite a difficult balancing act. But if he asserts himself too much, he rubs the army up the wrong way. If he doesn't do enough, then the army completely run rampant. So I think he's genuinely in a very difficult position. For years, Japan had been eyeing up the resources of an area known as Manchuria. That's the modern-day entirety of northeast China, including bits of Russia's far east. Taking advantage of China's political upheaval, China's division and weakness, Japan steadily tightened its grip on this territory. They pushed ever further south.

Then came the crisis of 1937. There was a skirmish on the outskirts of Beijing. It was used as a pretext for launching a full-scale Japanese invasion of the rest of China. In the winter of that year, the Japanese captured and sacked Nanjing. They committed one of the worst atrocities of the Second World War, and that's saying something worst atrocities of the Second World War, and that's saying something. Mass murder of the city's civilians, disarmed Chinese soldiers, as well as rape and looting on an industrial scale. This is what we call the Second Sino-Japanese War. Well, in some ways, this marks the real beginning of World War II.

What do we know about his sort of role there? marks the real beginning of World War II. What do we know about his sort of role there? So I think at this point, Japan is really in trouble at home as well as abroad. So in 1932, the Prime Minister's been assassinated. There've been other political assassinations in the years that followed. There was an attempted coup in 1936 in Tokyo. So the volatility of politics at home, I think, is quite an important part of this picture. Abroad, Hirohito is constantly being assured by members of the armed forces that they are not interested in a full occupation of China, that what they want to do is make sure that Japan is secure in Manchuria, and they want to stop Chinese attacks from China into Manchuria, which is causing a great deal of trouble. So Hirohito

is constantly being assured that that's the limit of it, that we don't want to go any further. But then what you have in the summer of 1937, a series of incidents which really didn't need to go any further. I suppose the most famous one is at the Marco Polo Bridge in Beijing. If relationships were better at this point between the Japanese and the Chinese, you could have sorted that away with a little bit of diplomacy between the two sides. But I think the rhetoric building up at home in Japan, and this is not just in the armed forces, but you see it in the Japanese media as well. There's a real sense that under Chiang Kai-shek, the Chinese have been taught to hate and resent the Japanese. And that if Chiang Kai-shek can be humbled, can be brought to heel, then relationships

between the two sides can be improved. And I think in the same way in China, they're being taught that the Japanese have a foothold in Beijing, the Japanese are in Shanghai as well, they have an armed presence there looking after their people who are living in Shanghai, they're there in Manchuria. There's a lot of anti-Japanese rhetoric on the Chinese side as well, all of which means by the time you get to the summer of 1937, neither side can really back down. And instead, you have the Japanese taking control of Beijing in August, going on to Shanghai, and then by the end of the year, going on to Nanjing as well. So this sort of lightning progress across really important parts of China. all the time back home, the emperor is constantly being assured that we aren't interested in all-out war with China. What we're trying to do is get Chiang Kai-shek to come to the table,

negotiate something and bring all this to an end. And I think Hirohito, whether he believes that or not is really hard to determine. There's a lot of debate about Hirohito, but I think you really cannot paint him as someone who is a warmonger and a militarist. He's never really pushing for that kind of thing. So from your point of view, how can we get close to his character? How do you think he's better described? What was he like? I have never heard him described, for example, as being a canny political operator. As close as we can get to his personality, I would say cautious to the point of being indecisive. So in that sense, I think he probably was quite ill-suited to the role. That said, you know, he's got a lot of advisors around him in the imperial court and then in the political cabinet who simply want different things. When you've got the armed forces divided

over what to do, whether they should prioritise the Chinese and the Russians, or whether they should worry more about the Americans and the British at sea. When you've got people in the political cabinet who are worried that the militarists have too much power over the nation's affairs and that they want to try and reassert the power of civilian politicians. Japan is, you know, politically a complete mess in the 1930s and the early 1940s. And I think Hirohito is part of that. And it's hard to see, to be honest, whether even someone of a more forceful personality and perhaps of greater political

intelligence could really have managed a situation that was constitutionally so fraught. a situation that was constitutionally so fraught. I think we got a sense from Chris that Hirohito as a leader, at least in those early years, he was fairly benign, fairly ineffective. It's hard to paint him as a warmonger. He doesn't seem to have any driving passion for power or for imperial aggrandizement like Hitler or Stalin. But he also doesn't do anything practically to try and stop the aggressive policy course of his nationalist, expansionist military commanders. Perhaps Hirohito felt he was powerless to stop them, given the delicate balance between imperial power

and the military and politicians in Japan at this time. So next I went to Felix O'Brien. He's a professor of strategic studies at the University of St. Andrews. And fascinatingly, he takes a slightly different approach. He believes that the emperor did have more agency than is often assumed. I find it fascinating the lack of sources, this lack of clarity, allows brilliant historians to build different interpretations of Hirohito's imperial rule. Phillips, how much power, how much influence does the Emperor of Japan have in the 1930s?

I think we can say now he does have, if he chooses to use it, a great deal of authority to stop. He could have stopped any invasion or almost any military operation if he had wanted to, because the military will respect his desires. It's probably the only person the military will respect in Japan. They don't respect civilian leadership a great deal. They don't even respect each other. So the army and navy don't communicate a great deal. But the emperor has a really powerful position at the top of the hierarchy. And if he does not give his assent, it is very difficult to see the military doing something like Pearl Harbor, say. They're not going to attack Pearl Harbor unless they know

the emperor is behind them. So where's the strategic direction in Japan coming from? Well, Hirohito is not what we'd call a great grand strategist. He doesn't fit the paradigm of war leader. He doesn't give speech. He's not there making a great speech, a Churchill or a Roosevelt or a Hitler or a Mussolini. He just doesn't do that. Most Japanese had never heard his voice until 1945. He doesn't make political pronouncements. He doesn't write things that people read. So he doesn't fit the paradigm of a war leader at all. On the other hand, he is obsessed with military operations in one way. He has one overriding goal, and that is to protect the Japanese imperial system with himself and his family at the head. He believes he is a divine ruler, divinely inspired, and under all conditions, he wants to keep the imperial system in place in

Japan. And what he believes is that military success is a key part of that. So if they can seem military or if they are military successful, that reinforces the imperial system with him at the top. So he was a believer in military adventurism to cement his family's position within Japan. Adventurism might be too strong. He certainly is a believer in the use of military operations for political purposes. The great example, I should start earlier, is probably 1937. And in 1937, there is an incident, the Marco Polo Bridge incident in China, which begins the Japanese invasion of China.

That was not a deliberate plan. The Japanese did not expect to invade all of China in 1937, but there's an incident, the army presses on. And at that point, Hirohito plays a fascinating role. He didn't start it, but he's not going to stop it. And what he actually starts arguing for is, okay, let's fight a big battle and win it. He actually says to the army, all right, if we're in this thing now, it's important that we fight a decisive battle, emerge victorious, and that will support the regime. The old decisive battle myth.

One big push, break the enemy. It's an entire Japanese concept that repeats itself endlessly. Pearl Harbor is supposed to be a decisive battle. So they're always looking for a great engagement that will win a war or turn the tide of a war. I would say Hirohito has a deeply flawed view of how war is fought, but that is a consistent view. Even to the end, the planning was to fight in Japan, to fight such a destructive battle that the Americans will agree to some kind of peace deal. What does Hirohito want? What does Japan want? An empire? Economic self-determination? Autarky?

What do they want? Well, what he wants is, I think, Japan to be as large and powerful as possible. It's a bit like Mussolini in the sense, where exactly should the Japanese empire be is not entirely clear. Certainly, he's happy when they take parts of China. He's worried about getting involved in too much of a morass in China by trying to fight the old war. Does he actually want to go all the way down to the Dutch East Indies and what we know of now as Indonesia? So, I don't think he has fully thought about idea. This is the area of the Japanese empire. But he believes in military force as a sign of Japanese greatness, which reinforces the power of his rule.

Go listen to our Leaders series. More after the break. The Greatest Mystery in human history. We're talking Vikings. Normans. Kings and popes. Who were rarely the best of friends. Murder. Rebellions. And crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit. Wherever you get your podcasts. In the summer of 1940, Japan formally joined Germany and Italy in the Axis Alliance by signing the Tripartite Pact.

These powers bonded over their shared hatred of communism. Their sense that the world order was stacked against them. In a world of rich global empires, they wanted their share. Japan's been fighting in China for years, incredibly costly. Japan's Axis ally, Germany, is fighting the Soviet Union. Japan could have engaged there. Why on earth head thousands of miles east and strike the US in Hawaii? Because they had miscalculated and they could not admit that they had miscalculated.

The Japanese regime had put itself in a terrible strategic bind in the second half of 1941. What they had done is they had calculated that Germany had won the war. That's it. Europe's gone German. So they can start taking advantage of the remains of the old European empires. And what they do is in the summer of 1941, they occupy a large part of what we know now, which is Vietnam, which is part of the French Empire. They sort of insert themselves into Vietnam. They had not anticipated the American reaction. And Roosevelt's reaction to this was far harsher than they expected. And what Roosevelt says is, okay, we're going to embargo oil on Japan. Now that is, we can't understand just how dramatic that is now, because what Roosevelt is saying is your economy will collapse in three years. That's it,

because Japan has no oil, none. They didn't have a single drop of oil in the country that they could make. They were getting all that oil from North and South America, or almost all of it. And Roosevelt's saying, you're not going to get any oil. So that literally means all your power is going to go once you go through your stockpiles. And the Japanese just weren't expecting that kind of dramatic reaction. And that means they're sort of stuck. They either have to admit that they have miscalculated and pull out of Vietnam. And indeed, the Americans say at this point, you got to pull out of China too. Tell you what, we put this embargo on you, you got to pull out of Vietnam and you got to start getting out of China. You've got to admit you have totally miscalculated or your other alternative is to go to war. And what's interesting is to save face as much as anything else, not to, in their minds, immediately imperil the regime by

telling the Japanese people they had screwed up, that they would rather risk going to war with the USA. It is really an extraordinary decision in many ways because it is trying to save face. And they're unable to admit that they had made such a disastrous miscalculation. And Hirohito is part of that, without a doubt. Why was the US so determined? It had been trying to avoid war with Germany in Europe, in the North Atlantic space.

Why the really quite aggressive mood to suspend oil exports to Japan over Southeast Asia? Because it's just an area of greater American focus and interest? The Roosevelt administration thought that this was a coordinated Axis move. Their nightmare in the summer of 1941, this is the summer where Hitler attacks the Soviet Union, is that actually the axis is on the march together. And so what they see is Japan taking advantage of what's going on in Europe. And this is all part of a great plan. Roosevelt actually doesn't want war with Japan at that point. He thinks they're going to have to back down. Roosevelt is looking at it from what we

call a rationalist point of view. So Roosevelt's like, well, they're not going to attack the United States. We produce 20 times what they produce. It's not a rational calculation. They will have to back down. So he thinks in many ways he's slamming the Japanese so hard, it will keep them out of the war. And that means he can continue to focus on Europe. What then the Japanese do is not what he's expecting in the summer of 1941. They start opting more and more to attack the Americans. Is Hirohito's chosen prime minister, Hideki Tojo, who we know of as the sort of the Japanese leader when the war starts. Tojo is chosen by Hirohito, who likes Tojo a great deal. So Hirohito knows exactly what the Japanese are planning to do. He has consulted on it and he supports it. This is the

kind of thing that was covered up after the war. It's just how positive he was about the war, how he, by the way, had been warned by people that this could go wrong by his younger brother, who was very worried about what it means, and how he had changed the government to be more pro-war. So he, you could argue, has the most responsibility in the Japanese system for starting the war. We have a view tinged by Hollywood of sort of ultra-formal silent meetings in which Hirohito sits there and eventually nods one way or another and there's no discussion. Do you think there would have been robust back and forth? Would there have been debate in Hirohito's presence involving him? Well, debate is an interesting, I mean, there would have been difference of opinion. It would

have been expressed often quite subtly. There wouldn't have been shouting or screaming in front of Hirohito, but there would have been people presenting different views. And then of course, often he would express himself more to intimates in the non-formal setting about what he believed. So often the most interesting information isn't what we hear about what was said in the meeting, which, by the way, the meeting descriptions often are very protective of Hirohito. It's what he would say afterwards to his brother or other intimates. So there was an absolute difference of an opinion. We know that because the prime minister was changed, that they were making a war government. And he would have been aware that there was a faction

that did not want to do Pearl Harbor, and he made sure that they were out of power. The attack on America at Pearl Harbor, is that the beginning of an imagined process of pushing American forces right back to the West Coast, or is it a short, sharp shock by the Japanese Empire time and in their fever dreams come some kind of compromise? The Japanese were assuming two things when they do Pearl Harbor. They are assuming the Germans are going to win.

They were gambling on a German victory. And a German victory means that they, in a sense, are going to get their way and the US is going to have to accept some kind of deal. On the other hand, what the Japanese don't have is any logical plan to bring the war to a conclusion. They knew how to start the war against the U.S., but their way, discussion of how the war might end was very vague. So it was the kind of thing where they would deal such hard blows to the Americans that eventually the Americans would have to come to some kind of deal with them. They knew they couldn't conquer the USA. They weren't detached from reality in that sense. However, what they got wrong was the idea that the US would tire of the war somehow,

tire quite quickly and reach a deal. That's just a miscalculation of the Japanese. You might say it is one of the most dangerous war-starting decisions because they literally had no way to end the war they were starting. And the timing is so extraordinary because in the weeks before Pearl Harbor, Hitler's Wehrmacht is moving steadily towards Moscow. The decision taken at that time is so extraordinary because two weeks later, Hitler's forces were in catastrophic disarray outside Moscow, but the deed had been done.

Yep. And the German successes in November 1941 are definitely in the Japanese mind confirming their decision to attack Pearl Harbor. So it's going together. They really do believe that this is part of an overall Axis victory. So Phil, we're beginning in 1942. The US has been damaged at Pearl Harbor, but not nearly as dramatically as Japan maybe thought at the time. Aircraft carriers escape, many of the battleships raised, dockyard infrastructure, oil, intelligence, all untouched. The Japanese then go on this tear through, well, actually in all different directions at once, which is probably a mistake. But what are they trying to do in early 1942? What they're doing is trying to set up an empire with all the resources it needs to look after itself. So the Japanese are trying to set up a perimeter, which will give them oil and bauxite

for aluminum and rubber in Malaya. So they're trying to set up a resource-rich empire, which can supply itself with all the raw materials to continue producing the raw material to hold the U.S. off. That's the overall calculation. So that's why once they attack Pearl Harbor, they actually don't push west. They push south because that's where all the resources are in modern-day Indonesia, modern-day Malaysia, places like that. And they're very successful in that. So they basically put together this resource-rich empire. So it's so circular, isn't it? Because you start a war with the US

to allow you to conquer an empire that will allow you to fight a war with the US. Yeah, that's in a sense what they're doing. Yeah, they're trying to fight a war with the US to get the resources to exhaust the US and keep the empire going. But even though with the resources they have, they don't really do the But even though with the resources they have, they don't really do the maths, that with the resources they conquer, they're still not going to be able to produce anything like the U.S. can produce.

That's the odd thing is that you would think they could have done the calculations, but they're just not there. But they do put together this empire by the summer of 1942. It's there. And they do have quite a large defensive perimeter. But then the war starts going wrongly for them from midway onwards, people would say.

And their Hirohito plays a more assertive role often than is understood. Now, again, he is not ordering troops around. He's not Hitler. He's not saying you must do this. But the really important campaign in the Pacific War in the second half of 42 is Guadalcanal. Guadalcanal is one of the most important attritional engagements of the war. It goes on a long time. The Americans land in September of 1942 and it goes well into 43 before the Japanese pull out. It's one of the longest engagements of the entire Pacific war. And it eats up material far more than, say, any battle like Midway or Pearl Harbor, the overall losses at Guadalcanal in terms of aircraft and equipment far larger. What Hirohito does is he constantly stresses on his military, you must try to hold Guadalcanal. You must show spirit. You must take risks to hold

this as he's trying to basically hold the Americans as far away as possible. And he creates or makes this a far more destructive battle for Japan than it has to be because he is urging his military to keep trying to hold Guadalcanal. Pouring more resource into the meat grinder rather than cleverly withdrawing and fighting elsewhere. Absolutely. He doesn't trade land for time. He actually tries to hold the extreme and loses a huge amount of force at the extremities. You just mentioned the Battle of Midway.

Let's come on to Midway. There was a very daring US attempt to bomb Japan using aircraft carriers that escaped Pearl Harbor. To what extent did that drive Hirohito and the Navy to try and neutralize those aircraft carriers by ambushing them at the islands of Midway, right in the middle of the Pacific? The big thing about Midway is it's part of the Japanese decisive battle idea. They had Pearl Harbor, and then it turns out a few months later, well, actually, the American Navy has not been wiped out, that it's still there and still has some aircraft carrier.

I mean, what Pearl Harbor did was sink the battleships. But by the spring of 1942, it's quite clear the battleships aren't that important. So the losses the U.S. Navy suffered at Pearl Harbor were not catastrophic losses, and that the real strength it has is in aircraft carriers. So the Japanese need to have a way to engage the American Navy and try and destroy what's left of the American Navy. And that's, I think, the genesis of the Midway campaign. That Midway itself, of course, is an island in the middle of the Pacific. I mean, it's probably one of the most isolated islands in terms of things around it are really a long way away, but it's sort of on the way to Pearl Harbor. And the Japanese view is if they attack Midway, the Americans will have to defend it.

It will force the Americans to send everything into battle. And so therefore, the Japanese will have the initiative and they will do something that will draw the Americans out desperately. And as the Americans come out to try and hold Midway, they can sink them. What they do not know is the Americans know the Japanese are doing this. So the Americans are not going to be drawn out. The Americans are there waiting for them. And the Japanese are actually steaming into a trap. Do we think Hirohito was involved in that decision?

Midway fits Hirohito's general conception of war. Going out, showing spirit, taking the war to the enemy and hopefully fighting a decisive battle. So he was not opposed to Midway. I mean, in fact, Midway is almost his archetypal kind of campaign. It's one of the reasons the Japanese, I would say, lose the war. And Hirohito is a terrible war leader because they are always looking for an event to change what is actually a war of production. And Midway, the Japanese carrier force ends up being obliterated. It is the end of any offensive capability really of Japan in the Pacific.

Yeah. I mean, they lose four of their six best carriers at the Battle of Midway. So, I mean, that's a big loss. And they're not churning out carriers, are they? They're not churning. Though the Americans, by the way, lose the equivalent of Midway in 1942. They just lose it on four separate days. At the end of 1942, the Americans and the Japanese have lost the same number of carriers. The difference is the Japanese can't make the new ones. So what the Americans can do, particularly from 43 onwards, is just churn out these new class of aircraft carriers, and the Japanese can't keep pace. So the Americans can make up and exceed losses the Japanese can't. So even though the Japanese don't lose more than the Americans in 42,

they can't make up the losses in nearly the same way. Go listen to our Leaders series. Join us after the break. research from the greatest millennium in human history. We're talking Vikings, Normans, Kings and Popes, who were rarely the best of friends, murder, rebellions, and crusades. Find out who we really were by subscribing to Gone Medieval from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. And we should say the obvious, that this Japanese strategy of somehow persuading the Americans that it wasn't worth fighting, somehow making the war-weary disenchanted giving up, that did not come to pass, did it? I mean, what was the effects of Pearl Harbor on the American public and political class? Yes, they did. They started the war in the one way that was going to be sure that the Americans were going to fight it through. But if you start a war with what the Americans will, you know, is a sneak attack, so they start dropping the bombs before

they declare war, you have basically created in the United States an enemy that desperately wants revenge. And the American people were always harsher on Japan in the war than they were on the German population. They were more skeptical and more anti-Japanese than they were anti-German. And the United States military does certain things against Japan, such as the bombing of cities, which it was somewhat more divided upon with Germany. So I think what the Japanese have done is basically destroyed their whole strategy by starting the war in that way. And it's also a great trap for dictatorial or authoritarian regimes, is that you try to make your enemy what you want them to be, as opposed to what they are. Hitler did the same. Oh, Americans are soft. They really won't stay

with the war that long. They're far more interested in their pleasures. They're soft Democrats. But that was the Japanese view. It was just wrong. Let's go forward now, Phil, to the summer of 1944. You've got a catastrophic naval battle in June 1944, the Battle of Philippine Sea. You've got the Americans now with unbelievable weight of aircraft carriers, of embarked marine divisions of amphibious capability. They're taking islands. They're attacking a place like Saipan and Guam, Tinian. American long-range bombers are starting to strike at the Japanese homeland. Is this a decision point for Hirohito? Well, I mean, it certainly does lead to some important political changes and shows what kind

of war leader Hirohito is. On the one hand, he is hoping the summer of 44 ends up in another one of these decisive battles, in this case for Japan, that as the Americans come for what are called the Mariana Islands, and you can't understate the strategic importance of the Mariana Islands. They are most famously Sipantinian and Guam. They are so located that they are the only islands in the Pacific that can be reached at this point from which the Americans can bomb Japan. So they are absolutely crucial Japanese islands. And the Americans are going for them. The Japanese know they're going to come for the Mariana Islands. And so the assumption is the Japanese will engage the Americans in a great battle, decisive battle, do a lot of damage, and this will be part of

their defensive strategy. And they'll sue for peace. And they'll sue for peace, or they will be so badly destroyed, they'll be kept at bay. Now it ends up being utterly different. And the Japanese are overwhelmed, not so much materially, but they're overwhelmed by things like pilot training and logistics. And the Americans can bring so much more to the table and full military systems so that the Japanese lose 300 pilots and they shoot down just a handful of Americans. And that's a question of pilot training logistics as much as anything else. Japanese have a lot of force at the Battle of Philippine Sea. And what happens after that is Hirohito was forced on the one hand to have Tojo go. That's the end of Tojo as prime minister, because they understand what the fall of the

Marianas is going to bring. That the war, which had been kept from the Japanese people to that time, that there hadn't been any bombing of Japan. And by the way, they had also been lying, can I say their butts off, to the Japanese people about how well the war was going. I mean, the Japanese people must have been fascinating because they kept hearing another great victory from the Imperial Japanese Navy. We have sunk 12 American carriers and done this.

And so they were only hearing stories of victory after victory after victory. And yet what interesting is all the victories were getting closer to Japan. So I wonder what, you know, how that's translating, but they can't hide the fact that they've lost the Marianas because they're about to be bombed. And that is why they were so desperate to hold it and to make this into the

decisive battle. They have a real problem when the Mariana islands fall, and that is why they were so desperate to hold it and to make this into the decisive battle. They have a real problem when the Mariana Islands fall that the bombing is going to start with the development of the B-29. With the B-29, the very long-range bombers is a real technological leap in aircraft production and allows bombing from the kind of distances that were inconceivable before the war. So two things happen.

Hirohito basically has to cashier Tojo, and Tojo carries the blame for it, never Hirohito. Hirohito never carries the blame. The other thing is that Hirohito seems to be quite supportive of the move to suicide attacks. So the Japanese had been flirting with the idea of suicide attacks, the kamikaze, for a while, But they hadn't really done it in large numbers. They hadn't had a plan. But it is after the fall of the Mariana Islands that they really double down and think, okay, now's the time to go for the suicide operations. And Hirohito is not opposed. He's pretty supportive of the suicide operations.

And that now becomes a part of Japanese warfighting strategy up until the end. So Hirohito is very obviously plumping for suicidal resistance. Last man, last bullet, every inch contested. Was there any alternative? Was there a political solution on the table at this point? Was there any sense of a negotiated out? Or did he now think the Americans had their blood up and would string them up from a lamppost? Well, he's fighting for the preservation of the imperial system, at least within Japan from this point.

I think there is a realization that, oh, they're not going to end up with everything they had seized in 1942. That's out of the question. But they still believe a few things. One, they believe they can use the Soviet Union to help cut a deal. Hirohito personally, again, I think a sign perhaps how detached from reality they were, because during, you know, 42, 43, and 44, the Soviets and the Japanese were not at war with each other. They were neutral. They had a neutrality treaty. The Japanese think they can

use the Soviet Union in some ways to broker a deal eventually with the Americans and the British. And the hope is that they can make the war so costly for the Americans and the British that ultimately they will accept some kind of deal that will allow Japan to remain as an independent power with the emperor, maybe with parts of Manchuria or some of the earlier empire there. So in their mind, they still have a strategy perhaps not to win the war, but a strategy to maintain their rule.

And that is what is happening after the Mariana Islands. And that's where suicide weapons are. One, they're effective. I mean, the suicide weapon is, for the Japanese, probably the most effective weapon they have to attack naval vessels. But also, they're trying to say to the Americans, look, this is what we will do.

You're going to have this more and more as you get closer to Japan. Maybe you should make a deal with us. And you mentioned getting close to Japan and learn or know that the defense of the home islands, of course, we're going to need to remember they had absolutely no idea about the atomic weapons program. The defense of the home islands, which is D-Day style attacks on the beach on the Japanese civilian population will be met with astonishing levels of resistance, suicidal

resistance. That's the plan. I mean, the plan is to make it so bloody for the Americans through the use of suicide weapons. By the way, at that point, we're talking about using civilians as well. Civilians were being told to strap bombs to themselves. And by the way, the amount of suicide weapons by early 45 are very different than just the planes that we know about. There were suicide boats. There were suicide cars, suicide vehicles. There were literally people who were told- Swimming to strap-

Strap bombs on yourself. It was supposed to engage on all levels, land, sea, and air. And the plan, which Hirohito, he knew this was going on. He indeed speaks very respectfully of the kamikaze. He acknowledges their sacrifice and thinks it's a very profound thing for the state. And he would have been very happy to see millions of his citizens sacrifice themselves for his rule. Phillips, there are few strategists who've ever dealt with what the Japanese, what Hirohito deal with in just a couple of days in August 1945. The Japanese homeland struck with not one,

but two atomic weapons, weapons of hitherto unimaginable power. And the Soviet army, the biggest, most astonishing veteran-filled force in Eurasia at the time, launches an overwhelming attack on Japanese possessions in Northern China. How did he even go about trying to solve this? Well, Hirohito actually does understand the war's over. And they really get down to one point, is that to protect the emperor's rule. The atomic bomb is dropped August 6th. By August 10th, you've had another atomic bomb and the Soviets enter the war. On August 10th, Hirohito has decided that Japan has to get out of the war. So the hammer blows have finally got their message in. What they want, however, is any guarantee, even the flimsiest sign that they can get

that the Americans might not get rid of the imperial system. And they believe in sort of diplomatic exchanges, they're getting some assurance there's a chance that Hirohito's position will be protected, or at least that he's not automatically out. And for Hirohito, that's enough. He does actually at that point want the war to end more because it's probably the only chance he has of protecting his rule. He makes that calculation. And it is pretty well attested that on this occasion that he is the one who decisively intervenes as it's over, boys. Yep. I mean, he does decide

on August 10th from what we can tell that that's it. There had been a growing peace lobby in the government. So it's not like he creates this. Before that, he had been siding a lot

with the hardliners. Hirohito's method from 41 onwards had been to side with the more aggressive, the hardline faction. On August 10th, he moves decisively to side for the peace faction. And that is important because once it comes out that the emperor is opting to end the war, the extremists in the army in some ways lose heart and the hardliners realize the game is up.

So that the army, which would have had a faction that would have kept fighting atomic bomb or otherwise, they would have kept fighting until they themselves were killed, do agree that they will accept the fact the emperor has admitted the war is over. It's interesting that we talk about Hereto as a poor strategist, and he obviously was, but it's a reminder that as long as you get the last call right, sometimes that might be enough to save you. He made every single wrong call during the war, but he got the last call right. Well, he is the most successful Axis leader, because he dies in his bed in the 1980s as the emperor of one of the richest countries in the world. Japan is

actually booming by the 1980s when he dies, and he ends up being a revered figure, a very popular figure in Japan. And what he does and what you might say the Japanese establishment does around him is start protecting his reputation and position with great skill from the moment the war ends. with great skill from the moment the war ends. I mean, it's extraordinary that everybody who talks about the war, when they go back, they would say, oh, the emperor really didn't want war. Emperor believed in, it's not true at all, none of it is, but it was almost like everyone had a hymn sheet, and they all sang from the same hymn sheet, which was to exonerate Hirohito and Hirohito's role in the war.

And in many ways, the Americans go along with that because someone like MacArthur believes a constitutional monarch is actually an important way to maintain stability in Japan. And in fact, what MacArthur believes is if the emperor shows that the emperor supports the new American rule, that will make the new American rule successful. And Hirohito's happy to go along with that. So Hirohito adjusts from being the great opponent of America to be an enabler of American rule. And from that, he ends up actually having a nice long life.

Phillips, I've never thought about this before, but it's the hottest of hot takes. Hitler and Mussolini die murdered or by their own hand as their country line ruins all of their dreams up in smoke. Churchill dies feeling disappointed the British Empire no longer exists. He hasn't achieved his aim. Hirohito, hot take, one of the most successful strategists of World War II leaders. Maintains his position and, you know, ends up his life doing what he wants and studying insects and being happy as can be. So... Japan prosperous. Japan prosperous. Revered around the world.

And his reputation intact when he dies. Now, his reputation has been challenged since he has died quite aggressively. But by the time he dies, he's probably thinking, everyone loves me. It's fascinating to consider how things might have looked different after the war. Had Hirohito been arrested, tried, perhaps even executed, would Japan have risen up against American occupation? Would there have been a coup or would it have swung the other way? Would it have seen an upsurge in communist feeling?

There's a really difficult moral dilemma here. Monstrous crimes were carried out in Hirohito's name. He knew about them. In a perfect world, he should have faced justice. And yet, perhaps smoothed by his continued rule, Japan became one of the world's leading democracies, an engine of prosperity, of innovation, of arts, of culture. But then perhaps maybe that happened despite Hirohito's continued presence on the throne. We will never know. Thank you to both Dr Chris Harding and Phillips O'Brien, whose new book The Strategist was the

inspiration for this series. Join me next time for the last episode in our Leaders series, where we'll be examining the importance of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Could America have so decisively intervened in the war if it hadn't been for his leadership? To get the next episode, hit follow on your podcast player and it'll drop into your libraries if by magic. See you next time. Thank you.